Spielberg spent $100,000 to digitally remove the guns in the government agents' hands and replaced them with walkie talkies in preparation for the 2002 20th Anniversary re-release of the film. He also added the following scenes that were scrapped from the original in the 2002 re-release to make the day longer that Elliott spends with E.T. when he plays hookie. This way, they can get better acquainted: 1.) Elliott and E.T. standing in front of the bathroom mirror, comparing their height. E.T. extends his neck so that he is as tall as Elliot. 2.) Elliott weighs E.T. on the scale. 3.) Elliott showing E.T. what a bathtub looks like and how it works while E.T. is preoccupied, fiddling with the toiletries near the bathroom sink. 4.) E.T. messing around in the bathtub and scaring Elliott at first because he's not sure if E.T. can swim.

Henry Thomas, who played Elliott, about 10 years later played the youngest son in the movie "Legends of the Fall" - he was the one who was killed in the war - and he still had the same "baby face" he had in E.T., just taller!

Elliot's brother in the movie, Michael (Robert MacNaughton) now works happily for US mail. I recently discovered this when I saw an interview with him in a '20 years on documentary', celebrating the release of Special Edition in 2002.

It is often said that Debra Winger provided the much-modified voice of E.T.

However, E.T.'s voice was provided by Pat Welsh, an elderly woman who lived in Marin County, California. Welsh smoked two packets of cigarettes a day, which gave her voice a quality that sound effects creator Ben Burtt liked. She spent nine-and-a-half hours recording her part, and was paid by Burtt for her services. Burtt also recorded 16 other people and various animals to create E.T.'s "voice". These included Spielberg; Debra Winger; Burtt's sleeping wife, who had a cold; a burp from his USC film professor; as well as raccoons, sea otters and horses.

ET and a few friends also appear in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Immediately after the scene at the Senate when Queen Amidala calls for a vote of no confidence against Chancellor Valorum, you can see a delegation of ETs at the bottom right of the screen waving their long fingers as the assembly descends into chaos. This scene seems to "link" both ET and Star Wars, creating a plausible explanation as to why ET approaches the kid in a Halloween Yoda costume crying "phone home! phone home!" - he recognised someone familiar!

There is a rumor that Dee Wallace broke her confidentiality agreement and leaked some information about the film to the media. Supposedly, Spielberg didn't take kindly to Wallace spilling the beans and unofficially black-listed Wallace in Hollywood. No one has confirmed the matter publicly but Wallace's career definitely took a downward swing following E.T.

E.T. was the first film produced by Steven Spielberg's company Amblin Entertainment. As a matter of fact, the scene where E.T. and Elliot fly in front of the moon on the bike is the same as used in the Amblin Entertainment logo.

Atari's home game based on E.T. is often cited as the worst video game in history. The E.T. disaster is credited with helping bring about the "death" of the original video game boom in the mid-eighties.

The famous shot of a silhouetted E.T. standing inside the rescue ship waiting for it to depart Earth was homaged in Star Wars, Revenge of the Sith; Yoda (apparently, a friend of E.T.) climbs aboard his own rescue ship on the Wookiee planet and is seen in silhouette just before take-off.

Michael Jackson recorded a narrated version of the E.T. soundtrack, complete with a song at the beginning and end ('Someone In the Dark') as well as a storybook; it was released on November 7, 1982 and was a huge success, but has not been seen since.